La Guajira Desert
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La Guajira Desert
The La Guajira Desert (Wayuu: Woumainkat Wajiira) is a desert located in northern Colombia and Venezuela, approximately north of Bogotá, covering most of the La Guajira Peninsula at the northernmost tip of South America. It is the continent's largest desert north of the equator. Most of the region is within Colombia's La Guajira Department, though a small portion is in the Venezuelan state of Zulia. The area holds immense coal reserves which are exploited in a zone known as El Cerrejón. It is also home to the indigenous Wayuu people. The Wayuu are mostly herders but also master deep-sea divers, known for collecting pearls from the Caribbean Sea. The peninsula is populated chiefly by xeric scrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It ..., which is home to a large va ...
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La Guajira Desert
The La Guajira Desert (Wayuu: Woumainkat Wajiira) is a desert located in northern Colombia and Venezuela, approximately north of Bogotá, covering most of the La Guajira Peninsula at the northernmost tip of South America. It is the continent's largest desert north of the equator. Most of the region is within Colombia's La Guajira Department, though a small portion is in the Venezuelan state of Zulia. The area holds immense coal reserves which are exploited in a zone known as El Cerrejón. It is also home to the indigenous Wayuu people. The Wayuu are mostly herders but also master deep-sea divers, known for collecting pearls from the Caribbean Sea. The peninsula is populated chiefly by xeric scrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It ..., which is home to a large va ...
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Cerrejón
Cerrejón is a large open-pit coal mine in Northern Colombia owned by Glencore. At Cerrejón, low-ash, low-sulphur bituminous coal from the Cerrejón Formation is excavated. At over the mine is one of the largest of its type, the largest in Latin America and the tenth biggest in the world. Cerrejón is divided into three sections, North Zone, Central Zone and South Zone. Total proven reserves are estimated at 503 megatonnes. In 2016, the mine produced . In June 2020, lawyers for the local Wayuu community lodged a request to the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights and the environment for work to be immediately halted over environmental and human rights concerns. In September 2020, several UN independent human rights experts called for the mining operations to be halted, citing the serious damage to the environment and the negative effects on the health and other rights of the indigenous peoples who live in the area. These experts include the Special Rapporteur for ...
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Deserts Of Colombia
A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the land surface of the Earth is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the polar regions, where little precipitation occurs, and which are sometimes called polar deserts or "cold deserts". Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location. Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks, which consequently break in pieces. Although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter, and the resulting fragments and rubble strewn over the ...
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National Natural Park Of Macuira
National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, census-designated place * National, Nevada, ghost town * National, Utah, ghost town * National, West Virginia, unincorporated community Commerce * National (brand), a brand name of electronic goods from Panasonic * National Benzole (or simply known as National), former petrol station chain in the UK, merged with BP * National Car Rental, an American rental car company * National Energy Systems, a former name of Eco Marine Power * National Entertainment Commission, a former name of the Media Rating Council * National Motor Vehicle Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 1900-1924 * National Supermarkets, a defunct American grocery store chain * National String Instrument Corporation, a guitar company formed to manufacture the first resonator gui ...
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Scrubland
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903. Shrubland species generally show a wide range of adaptations to fire, such as heavy seed production, lignotubers, and fire-induced germination. Botanical structural form In botany and ecology a shrub is defined as a much-branched woody plant less than 8 m high and usually with many stems. Tall shrubs are mostly 2–8 m high, small shrubs 1–2 m high and ...
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Xeric
Deserts and xeric shrublands are a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Deserts and xeric (ancient Greek xērós, “dry") shrublands form the largest terrestrial biome, covering 19% of Earth's land surface area. Ecoregions in this habitat type vary greatly in the amount of annual rainfall they receive, usually less than annually except in the margins. Generally evaporation exceeds rainfall in these ecoregions. Temperature variability is also diverse in these lands. Many deserts, such as the Sahara, are hot year-round, but others, such as East Asia's Gobi, become quite cold in winter. Temperature extremes are a characteristic of most deserts. High daytime temperatures give way to cold nights because there is no insulation provided by humidity and cloud cover. The diversity of climatic conditions, though quite harsh, supports a rich array of habitats. Many of these habitats are ephemeral in nature, reflecting the paucity and seasonality of available water. Woody-stemm ...
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Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles starting with Cuba, to the east by the Lesser Antilles, and to the south by the northern coast of South America. The Gulf of Mexico lies to the northwest. The entire area of the Caribbean Sea, the numerous islands of the West Indies, and adjacent coasts are collectively known as the Caribbean. The Caribbean Sea is one of the largest seas and has an area of about . The sea's deepest point is the Cayman Trough, between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, at below sea level. The Caribbean coastline has many gulfs and bays: the Gulf of Gonâve, Gulf of Venezuela, Gulf of Darién, Golfo de los Mosquitos, Gulf of Paria and Gulf of Honduras. The Caribbean S ...
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Pearl
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carbonate (mainly aragonite or a mixture of aragonite and calcite) in minute crystalline form, which has deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes, known as baroque pearls, can occur. The finest quality of natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries. Because of this, ''pearl'' has become a metaphor for something rare, fine, admirable and valuable. The most valuable pearls occur spontaneously in the wild, but are extremely rare. These wild pearls are referred to as ''natural'' pearls. ''Cultured'' or ''farmed'' pearls from pearl oysters and freshwater mussels make up the majority of those currently sold. Imitation pearls are also wid ...
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Wayuu
The Wayuu (also Wayu, Wayúu, Guajiro, Wahiro) are an Amerindian ethnic group of the Guajira Peninsula in northernmost part of Colombia and northwest Venezuela. The Wayuu language is part of the Maipuran (Arawak) language family. Geography The Wayúu inhabit the arid Guajira Peninsula straddling the Venezuela-Colombia border, on the Caribbean Sea coast. Two major rivers flow through this mostly harsh environment: the Rancheria River in Colombia and the El Limón River in Venezuela representing the main source of water, along with artificial ponds designed to hold rain water during the rain season. The territory has equatorial weather seasons: a rainy season from September to December, which they call ''Juyapu''; a dry season, known by them as ''Jemial'', from December to April; a second rainy season called ''Iwa'' from April to May; and a long second dry season from May to September. History Guajira rebellion Although the Wayuu were never subjugated by the Spanish, th ...
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Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous ( Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity ...
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Wayuu Language
Wayuu ( guc, Wayuunaiki ), or Guajiro, is a major Arawakan language spoken by 305,000 indigenous Wayuu people in northwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia on the Guajira Peninsula. There are 200,000 speakers of Wayuu in Venezuela and 120,000 in Colombia. Smith (1995) reports that a mixed Guajiro–Spanish language is replacing Wayuu in both countries. However, Campbell (1997) could find no information on this. Recent developments To promote bilingual education among Wayuu and other Colombians, the Kamusuchiwo’u Ethno-educative Center () came up with the initiative of creating the first illustrated Wayuunaiki–Spanish, Spanish–Wayuunaiki dictionary. In December 2011, the Wayuu Tayá Foundation and Microsoft presented the first ever dictionary of technology terms in the Wayuu language, after having developed it for three years with a team of technology professionals and linguists. Dialects The two main dialects are Wüinpümüin and Wopumüin, spoken in the northea ...
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Zulia
Zulia State ( es, Estado Zulia, ; Wayuu: ''Mma’ipakat Suuria'') is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Maracaibo. As of the 2011 census, it has a population of 3,704,404, the largest population among Venezuela's states. It is also one of the few states (if not the only one) in Venezuela in which voseo (the use of ''vos'' as a second person singular pronoun) is widespread. The state is coterminous with the eponymous region of Zulia. Zulia State is in northwestern Venezuela, bordering Lake Maracaibo, the largest body of water of its kind in Latin America. Its basin covers one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere. Zulia is economically important to the country for its oil and mineral exploitation, but it is also one of the major agricultural areas of Venezuela, highlighting the region's contribution in areas such as livestock, bananas, fruits, meat, and milk. Toponymy There are several competing theories about the origin of the s ...
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